Captain (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 4) (14 page)

Chapter 19

“They’re on the move, sir,” the XO said from where he was monitoring the surveillance and acquisition team from battalion.

Ryck looked up and walked over.  The five Marines had their equipment spread out in the CP, and the main display showed large numbers of contacts on the move.

“How many does it look like, SSgt Manley?” he asked the team leader.

“I’d say about what we expected:  around 2,000.  Do you want me to run a tally?”

“No, no need.  The rough count is fine,” Ryck responded.

The CO had wanted to augment the company with more firepower, but he’d been vetoed again from on high.  The powers that be did not want to tip off the dissidents—rebels, they called them—that the Marines expected anything.  Any sudden surge in manpower or weapons would have been noted. 

But having the surveillance and acquisition team was something they couldn’t argue against, and both Hortense and Bey were avidly watching the displays, although both seemed more interested in the live feeds from the ground-based sensors and the overhead—collected by both Marine drones and the
Inchon’s
space-borne sensors.  Ryck thought he could see a blood lust in Hortnese’s eyes as he awaited the fight, although he realized that could be just a projection of his own dislike of the man.

Ryck touched his XO on the shoulder and motioned him to follow. 

In the back of the CP, out of hearing range of the others, he quietly said, “OK, I’m going out to forward CP.  You know what I want, right?”

Lieutenant Peltier-Aswad took a quick glance back at the others crowded in the CP, and then just as quietly answered, “Yes, sir.  Keep an eye on our guests, and don’t let them give any orders.  Our orders come only from you.”

“Or Major
Snæbjörnsson
.  He’s the task force commander.  And if anything happens to him or me, you’re in charge.  Do not let any jimmylegs or FCDC gopher take command for any reason.”

“Roger that, sir.  I’ve got you covered.”

With that assurance, Ryck quietly left the CP to where LCpl Jaquinto from the armory had his PICS waiting for him.  He squirmed in and powered up.  His PICS could not directly display the feeds from the surveillance and acquisition team, which was a major liability, in Ryck’s estimation, but it could pick up the signals from the field repeater.  He couldn’t switch feeds on the repeater, but he could have the XO manually switch the feeds being broadcasted.  The Federation had settled vast swathes of space and could communicate instantaneously over its domain, but a combat commander could not control himself what feeds he wanted to receive.

Ryck felt the familiar mini-vibrations as his PICS came online.  He’d been in PICS for a good chunk of his career, and it was in the combat suits that he felt the most comfortable.  For a moment, he could forget Piss Interstellar, the Fuck-dicks, the S-3 coming to take command.  He was just a combat Marine, ready to do battle.

He had no real bone to pick with the dissidents and their causes.  In some ways, it seemed as if they were merely demanding their rights as Federation citizens.  And he felt their coming attack had been a sort of entrapment.  But entrapment or not, they were willingly coming to try and kill his Marines, and that made them his enemy.  He could sympathize with them in some ways, but when they decided to take on Charlie Company, they chose—unwisely, he knew—their path.  Now they would have to pay the consequences. 

His display clock showed 12 minutes before the river assault force entered the water and 32 minutes before the bulk of the dissidents started their feint.  What the dissidents didn’t know, though, was that First Platoon was also underwater, ready to scoop up the river force.  A PICS was not designed to fight underwater.  However, it could act as an effective, if cumbersome EVAvacsuit, so it was airtight.  A Marine could easily ford most rivers and streams in a PICS, staying underwater for up to about four hours without any modification.  When the morning “patrols” had gone out, the purpose had been two-fold.  It had kept up the routine, and it also allowed the patrols to double back into the river and form a line of defense.  Jeff had his men simply standing on the river bed, their low frequency sensors piercing the water as they waited for their prey.  The First Platoon Marines would be slightly outnumbered. But dissidents in commercial diver suits would be no match for combat Marines.  Ryck didn’t expect any problems on that front.

“You ready for this, Gershon?” he asked his Second Platoon commander on the P2P as he moved into the forward CP.

“Yes, sir.  Ready to be flybait,” Lt Chomsky responded.

If Ryck detected a slight bit of chippiness in Chomsky’s voice, he let it go.  Ryck understood the feeling.  He’d rather be out there himself, either with First or Third, but his job was to command, not fight, and with either of those platoons, he wouldn’t be commanding the company.  Like First, Third was underwater, just off Route 2 to the south of camp.  Of any of them, it would be Third that would see real action.  The assault section made up of Second and Weapons had the mission of seeming like a full company going about its daily routine.  Marines from Second moved back and forth outside of their PICS and kept up a normal chatter.  The gun sections of Weapons were hunkered down, each man armored up and with weapons ready, but on emissions silence.  When the assault began, the Second Platoon Marines would scrambled into their waiting PICS, and if Third ran into any problems, it would be thrown into the breach.  However, Ryck doubted it would come to that. 

Ryck was well aware of Clausewitz
[18]
and the “fog of war,” and that no battle plan ever lasted past the first shot fired.  However, in this case, Ryck had never been so sure of the final outcome.  What concerned him was the chance of Marines getting killed while achieving that outcome.  He had over 30 Marines wandering back and forth in the camp in their skins and bones, not PICS, and there would be incoming in half an hour.  Even in a PICS, a direct hit by the dissident’s guns could be fatal.

Ryck became more nervous as the display counted down the seconds.  Sitting and waiting was worse when he didn’t have a mission. 

He knew that wasn’t accurate.  He had a mission, a vital one.  He had to command.  But he didn’t know what that would entail.  As a junior Marine, all he had to do was close with and destroy the enemy.  That was easy to conceptualize, and he knew how to do that.  As a commander, he kept running through a multitude of possible scenarios, and what he would do for each one.

It was a relief when the first report was passed that First Platoon had gathered up the river assault force like fish in a net.  No one, Marine or dissident, had been hurt, and only two dissidents had managed to escape the trap.  Trucks were moving in from their staging area to pick up the prisoners while the
Inchon
blanketed out the river site to block any transmissions back to the larger ground assault force.

Just a few minutes after Ryck received that word, the first salvo from the dissidents’ Donaldsons opened up.

“All hands, armor up!” Ryck immediately passed as he asked his AI to plot the trajectories of the incoming rounds.

To his surprise, the first three rounds were projected to impact in the agricultural land just on the other side of the river.  Ryck turned to look as the rounds impacted, sending up nice gouts of smoke and dust.  He realized that to observing forces, the rounds would probably look like they were impacting inside the camp, and it might take them a few salvos to realize their mistake.

Both the jimmylegs and the FCDC had assured the Marines that the guns wouldn’t be an issue, and Ryck had to give them credit.  However they had messed with the firing data, though, as soon as the dissidents realized the error, they could manually make the corrections.  What this did, however, was allow Second Platoon to get into their PICS without the threat of incoming rounds.

There was the outgoing report of the M54 firing kinetic rounds.  Although the M54 was still attached to Charlie, the Three, as the task force commander, had pulled Ryck out of the loop and ordered it to fire.  The first round landed just at the crest of Route 2’s raised roadbed as the first of the frontal assault force crested it.  Bodies were blown back down the other side and out of sight.

As more dissidents showed themselves, the automatic gun teams opened up, kinetic rounds impacting on the roadbed and zipping over it—or into the bodies of dissidents as they ran forward.  Several dozen fell before the rest retreated back on the other side.

Ryck and the Marines knew this was a planned retreat.  The dissidents, thinking they had fixed the Marines defenses, would wait for the upcoming river-based assault from the rear before re-commencing their assault in earnest.  Only they wouldn’t get the chance.  Now, while they were bunched up on the far side of the roadbed, was the Marines’ opportunity.

“Taco-Charlie-Three, commence your assault,” Ryck ordered over the command circuit.

Lt. McAult didn’t respond, but slaving off his lieutenant’s display, Ryck could see him emerge from the murky water, hundreds of dissidents stretching along the roadbed.  Even with McAult’s feed taking up only six square centimeters in the bottom right of his display, he could see the panic of those dissidents nearest him as they realized that the trap had been sprung.

The Marines opened fire, which Ryck could both see on the feed and hear in real-time.  Dissidents opened fire as well, but they were poorly armed for a fight with PICS Marines, and each of Third Platoon’s avatars remained a bright, healthy blue.

Ryck watched as the blue avatars moved forward.  He could barely see the tops of some PICS over the roadbed until McAult ordered one of his Marines up onto the roadbed itself.  The gun teams from Weapons all had the Third’s avatars plotted, and each gun ceased firing as Marines entered that teams sectors of fire.  Lt McAult evidently was taking no chances, making sure that the gun teams knew where his Marines were.  The M881 12 mm guns fired a round that had the potential to damage or even take out a PICS, and no one wanted a friendly fire incident.

Ryck juggled his displays, trying to grasp the situation.  From an overhead live feed, he could see that the Marines had swept through half of where the dissidents had taken cover.  Bodies littered the ground, and groups of people were either surrendering or running.  The Donaldsons were silent, and Ryck felt the threat had been broken.

“Cease fire, cease fire.  Respond to any aggression, but do not initiate any further firing.  Restrain and capture all combatants, but deadly force is no longer authorized unless attacked.  All hands, acknowledge,” Ryck passed on the open circuit.

The acknowledgements started lighting up his display as the firing slowed to a halt.

“That is negative.  That order is not authorized.  All you Marines, keep firing your guns and kill every rebel!” a voice blasted out over the same circuit.

His AI didn’t identify the speaker, only that it was a Piss Interstellar “Security Team.”  A jimmylegs—who had no authority here.  The only person here who could overrule Ryck was Major
Snæbjörnsson
. 

“This is Taco-Charlie-Six Actual, belay that last unauthorized transmission.  There will be no more firing unless you are threatened.

“Mike, do you copy that?” he asked Lt McAult over the P2P.

“Roger that, sir.  I take my orders from you, not some flipping fat-ass jimmylegs.  The dissident attack is broken, but I need some help.  I’ve got a shitload of POWs, and I think some are slipping away.”

“You’ve got it, Mike.  I’m sending Gershon out now.  Good job.  Six, out.”

He turned to the Second Platoon commander and said, “OK, you’ve got a mission.  Get your men out there and help gather up the prisoners.  I don’t have to tell you that you are to protect yourselves at all times, but unless attacked, I don’t want any more killing.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” Lt Chomsky shouted as if his comms needed the extra input. 

He started passing orders, and his platoon started moving over the open area to the roadbed.

Ryck hadn’t been happy to turn the entire planning over to the Three, and he would have done things differently.  But it was hard to argue with success.  An assault of over 2,000 people had been turned back without a single Marine being hurt. 

That was something he could live with.

Chapter 20

“I’m proud of all of you.  Great job, Charlie Company!” Captain Rotigue told the assembled Marines, receiving a chorus of “ooh-rahs” in return.

Ryck joined in the clapping, but not too enthusiastically.  He still hadn’t digested the action that morning.  The
Inchon’
s CO—and task force commander—had made the trip down to survey the scene of the battle.  Approximately 625 of the dissidents had been killed, although that number could edge up a bit as the forested area was swept and more bodies discovered.  That was a huge number of dead, and all were Federation citizens, citizens who professed merely to want Piss Interstellar to heed the existing charter.  This number was not even close to the same magnitude of the massacres on Ellison and Fu Sing, but Ryck wasn’t comfortable having his name linked to any mass killings of citizens.  Yes, they attacked, and they paid the price for that idiotic decision; still, Ryck hoped history would stress that and not the outcome.

The battalion was formed up on the LZ, where the battleball games had been held just a short time ago.  Things had changed.  Out beyond the gate and across the open area leading to Route 2, Ryck could see trucks lined up to take the over 800 prisoners back to Tay Station.  FCDC troops were tasked with that evolution, and Ryck was happy to let them have it.  The Marines had repulsed the attack; now let the Fuckdicks play policemen to their hearts’ content.

CAPT Rotigue stepped off the platform and started pressing the flesh among the Marines.  That struck Ryck as very politician-like, and he took another look at the CO as if seeing him for the first time.  The captain was competent enough, but for Navy officers, things were a little different.  If a captain was selected for flag rank, that could be the next step of a journey that could end in the very highest levels of the Federation government.  Ryck wondered if this mission could be the stepping stone for Rotigue to earn his first star.  A command
and
a successful mission in support of a large corporation—that could earn him some friends in high places. 

Ryck was glad the Marines didn’t have to play those games.  Well, to be more accurate, they didn’t have the
opportunity
to play those games.  The Marine Corps was not above politics, and trying to earn a star did have its own checkmarks.  But no Marine was ever going to be the Chairman, and only one Marine had ever served on the Council over the past centuries.

“Hey, you with us?” Donte asked as he put his hand on Ryck’s shoulder.

“Oh, sure, just thinking,” Ryck said as he was pulled back to the present.

“Dangerous thing, that.  You thinking.”

“You’ve got that right,” Ryck said with a chuckle.

“You know, it’s bullshit, you not being put in for an award.  It’s your bleeding company,” Donte said, his indignation evident.

“Ah, forget it.  I’d rather not be considered,” Ryck said, and he was only slightly surprised that he meant it.

During CAPT Rotigue’s speech, he’d mentioned that Major
Snæbjörnsson
, Lieutenants McAult and del Madre, and Sergeant Abramowicz would be put in for awards.  No mention was made about Ryck, not that he needed any more medals.  And, to be honest, not that he thought he deserved any recognition.  The plan had been the major’s, not his.  All Ryck had done was watch it unfold and stop the killing once the field of battle was won.

But he appreciated Donte’s concern.  He’d known Donte ever since they were both midshipmen at NOTC, but they hadn’t been close until they’d served together in 3/1.  Now, Donte was one of his closest friends.  There were officers who were stand-offish with their peers or even worse.  It was more difficult to get promoted the higher a Marine rose within the ranks, and the bottom line was that with seven captains in the battalion, their evaluations with respect to each other would be a factor considered in future promotion boards.  Some officers could never forget that, could never overlook that, in some ways, it was a competition with each other. 

Not Donte, though.  There wasn’t a jealous bone in his body, and Ryck knew Donte wished him only the best.  He was a good Marine and a good friend. 

“It’s bullshit, that’s all, my man.  But you done good.  Stopping the slaughter was the right move.  We were all monitoring the fight back at the CP, and there were some high-fives when you countermanded that chicken-shit fuckdick.”

“Well, like you said, it was time to stop.  The dissidents were broken.”

“Keep fighting the good fight, Ryck.  I gotta fly now, though.  The big boss looks like he’s done, and I’ve got to catch a ride back with him to the CP.  I don’t want to have to catch a hover back,” Donte said.

“Welcome to my world.  I was riding back and forth every day for awhile,” Ryck said, taking Donte’s hand in a firm shake.

“Keep your head down,” Donte shouted over his shoulder after shaking Ryck’s hand and then sprinted to catch up to the command party as it started to load the Stork.

Ryck turned to go back to his company CP.  With the Three leaving, he was back in charge.  And he was feeling better.  Donte’s short talk had done that for him.  He may not have liked the mission, he may have regretted the loss of life, but he had performed it to the best of his abilities.  Charlie Company had broken the attack without a Marine or sailor getting hurt, and once the attack was broken, the company had ceased using lethal force.  Ryck had done what had to be done.  That was a victory.